This invention relates to robotically assisted surgery, and more particularly provides surgical tools having improved mechanical and/or data interface capabilities to enhance the safety, accuracy, and speed of minimally invasive and other robotically enhanced surgical procedures.
In robotically assisted surgery, the surgeon typically operates a master controller to remotely control the motion of surgical instruments at the surgical site. The controller may be separated from the patient by a significant distance (e.g., across the operating room, in a different room, or in a completely different building than the patient). Alternatively, a controller may be positioned quite near the patient in the operating room. Regardless, the controller will typically include one or more hand input devices (such as joysticks, exoskeletol gloves, master manipulators, or the like) which are coupled by a servo mechanism to the surgical instrument. More specifically, servo motors move a manipulator or "slave" supporting the surgical instrument based on the surgeon's manipulation of the hand input devices. During an operation, the surgeon may employ, via the robotic surgery system, a variety of surgical instruments such as tissue graspers, needle drivers, electrosurgical cautery probes, etc. Each of these structures performs functions for the surgeon, for example, holding or driving a needle, grasping a blood vessel, or dissecting, cauterizing, or coagulating tissue.
This new method of performing robotic surgery has, of course, created many new challenges. One such challenge is that a surgeon will typically employ a significant number of different surgical instruments during each surgical procedure. The number of independent surgical manipulators will often be limited due to space constraints and cost. Additionally, patient trauma can generally be reduced by eliminating the number of tools used at any given time. More specifically, in minimally invasive procedures, the number of entry ports into a patient is generally limited because of space constraints, as well as a desire to avoid unnecessary incisions in the patient. Hence, a number of different surgical instruments will typically be introduced through the same trocar sleeve into the abdomen during, for example, laparoscopic procedures. Likewise, in open surgery, there is typically not enough room adjacent the surgical site to position more than a few surgical manipulators, particularly where each manipulator/tool combination has a relatively large range of motion. As a result, a number of surgical instruments will often be attached and detached from a single instrument holder of a manipulator during an operation.
Published PCT application WO98/25666, filed on Dec. 10, 1997 and assigned to the present assignee (the full disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference) describes a Multicomponent Telepresence System and Method which significantly improves the safety and speed with which robotic surgical tools can be removed and replaced during a surgical procedure. While this represents a significant advancement of the art, as is often true, still further improvements would be desirable. In particular, each tool change which occurs during a surgical procedure increases the overall surgery time. While still further improvements in the mechanical tool/manipulator interface may help reduce a portion of this tool change time, work in connection with the present invention has shown that the mechanical removal and replacement of the tool may represent only one portion of the total interruption for a tool change. U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,267 describes a memory feature for electrically powered medical equipment, and is also incorporated herein by reference.
As more and more different surgical tools are provided for use with a robotic system, the differences between the tool structures (and the interaction between the tool and the other components of the robotic system) become more pronounced. Many of these surgical tools will have one or more degrees of motion between the surgical end effectors and the proximal interface which engages the tool to the holder of the manipulator. The desired and/or practicable ranges of motion for an electrosurgical scalpel may be significantly different than those of a clip applier, for example. Work in connection with the present invention has found that even after a tool is properly placed on the surgical manipulator, the time involved in reconfiguring the robotic system to take advantage of a different tool, and to perfect the master controller's effective control over the degrees of motion of the tool, may add significantly to the total tool change delay.
In light of the above, it would be desirable to provide improved robotic surgery tools, systems, and method. It would further be desirable to provide techniques for reducing the total delay associated with each tool change. It would be especially desirable if these enhanced, and often more rapid, robotic tool change techniques resulted in still further improvement in the safety and reliability of these promising surgical systems.